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Spring Showcase Director #6: Tamar Halpern

We feel more than honored that director Tamar Halpern is presenting a new piece by Alexandra Decas and Melanie Kirschbaum in our Spring Showcase on March 28. First off, she’s human person—you know what we mean—whose great talent lies in bringing out others’ humanities, even if it’s not so obvious they have them at first. What you might call honest filmmaking. She’s the writer/director of Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life,starring Mira Sorvino, Michael Urie, and Joe Pantoliano. Her previous features include Shelf Life, starring Betsy Brandt, and the documentary, Llyn Foulkes One Man Band, which premiered at the LA Film Festival and released theatrically 2014-2015. If you haven’t seen Llyn Foulkes yet, please do. It’s a feel-good film for all those artists who think they’re late bloomers. Here’s a bit more from our fabulous director Tamar below.

Plays – Almost anything by Tracy Letts, Shock Headed Peter, Stones in his Pockets. New production from Chicago that recently played in LA that blew me away was Luna Gale.

Shows – all of Spalding Gray’s monologues, Stomp.

Or did you mean TV shows? VEEP and The Comeback and Arrested Developemnt and Season 2 of Workaholics.

2. Did you go to film/theater school? What led you to being a writer or director?

I earned an MFA in Film and TV production from USC. Before that, I decided not to be an actor and go behind the camera instead, and it stuck!

3. Why do you personally want to collaborate with other women through One Axe?

I boycotted the Oscars this year because there were – again – no female writers or directed nominated. I want to do everything to support women in theater, not just as actresses. We write, we direct, we make babies if we feel like it, and we exact change through our views and voices.

4. “Where are you going, where have you been?”

I’m experiencing the first deep sorrow of my adult life. I don’t know where it will take me, but I am in it and letting it be as it needs to be.